We've seen this movie before

Except it ain't a movie. It's real life. That Madison Square Garden Nazi rally in 1939 actually happened. A little over 85 years later, the names and the faces might have changed, but the song remains eerily similar. You see, there was this pro-fascist movement in the US called the America First Movement (look it up - and note the similarities to the current bunch of jackals using America First as their brand) that had some Deutschmarks to fund it (our current fascists prefer Rubles, but I won't split hairs). They were all in on Hitler's program and sure as heck did not hide it. Today's MAGA crowd also don't hide it, and their Dear Leader is very explicit about doing fascist stuff: shut down media outlets that are critical of Trump, pardon the terrorists who tried to overthrow our government on January 6th 2021, round up immigrants and others deemed "undesirables" by Trump, and so on. You get the idea. As Samuel Clemens put it, history may not repeat but it sure rhymes. This time, the fascist threat comes to you in the form of a spray-tanned bigot. That original America First was a prequel to the current America First movement. The sentiment is the same, but has been rebranded. 

On some level, the dangerous toxicity of the rhetoric at tonight's Madison Square Garden rally appears to be a self-own by Trump and his henchmen. We can hope. I have no doubt that it played well to the intended crowd, which is the MAGA faithful. Maybe it will fire them up. Trump is their savior, after all. That's the funny thing about fascism: it isn't really so much a coherent political or governing philosophy as it is a cult of personality. There are some common features to fascist regimes, including the obsession with power, retribution, chaos, and terror. The ruler will promise order in exchange for your freedom of expression, freedom of the press, your ability to express yourself - in short, your soul. And maybe you do get "order" of a sort, insofar as the dictator will rule with an iron fist. Other than that, expect plenty of dysfunction and feeling constantly disoriented. Gaslighting will do that to you. And fascist dictators love to gaslight their subjects. It's what they do. If there's trouble in paradise, a little false flag op here or there will do the trick. Think of the Reichstag Fire of 1933 or the alleged Polish attacks on German-controlled territory that led to the invasion of Poland and the formal start of WWII in 1939. And yes, those Americans at the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939 were likely cheering the Nazis on as news of that war hit the papers and the airwaves, much as there are folks cheering on Russia's complete decimation of once-thriving cities and villages in Ukraine today.

The good news in these very troubled times is that we do still have a choice and we do have a positive alternative to what Trump and his fascist minions offer. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, along with Democratic Party and some independent politicians down-ballot have a coherent program to keep the US moving forward as a democracy, its imperfections duly noted. How much of that program can be enacted will depend on the composition of Congress. But the worst case scenario with a Harris Administration is that we buy ourselves four years to do the very hard work of strengthening and where needed rebuilding democratic institutions that will serve us all instead of a system that would only serve a very small handful of oligarchs. That may seem like a tall order, and it probably is. But it's four years we wouldn't have otherwise. 

A lot of folks I encounter in person or online say that they don't understand why anyone would support Trump or embrace a fascist dictator wannabe who completed a hostile takeover of a formerly conservative political party, turning it into something more befitting modern-day Russia or Hungary. Sometimes I find those sorts of statements disingenuous. Most of the time it's sincere. I think any of us, if given a chance, can at least understand intellectually what draws a subset of humanity to fascist movements, parties, and leaders. The easy part is to acknowledge that probably one in every four or five of the people we encounter on any given day are psychologically authoritarian. They want someone to rule them. They want a savior who will hurt the people they've been taught to hate. It's actually not that hard to understand. The other subset are folks who have received the short end of the stick for far too long, are frustrated, and are looking for answers and someone to hold responsible. There's a reason you see fascism's appeal in rural communities and in cities that are in decline. It's easy to feel left behind. I can tell you first-hand what it was like to move into a 90,000 person city that had once been a significant military and industrial city in the US South and that was in the process of losing arguably its largest employer. A manufacturing plant in my newly-adopted city was being closed and the jobs shipped overseas. The layoffs were massive and left my city considerably poorer. The simple allure of tariffs and mass roundups of immigrants is what it is, even if it won't bring back any of the lost jobs. The more complex explanation of how decades of short-sighted policy decisions led to that moment of losing a major manufacturing plant is harder to break down for folks. The more complex explanation and the complex solutions needed to bring some new jobs back is a heavier lift. 

I will be careful about parallels between the US of the current era and the Germany of the Weimar Republic era. The Germany of the 1920s and early 1930s was one that had suffered a humiliating defeat in a major war and went through periods of hyperinflation and economic depression. There was the on-going chaos in the streets as the communists and Nazis were fighting it out, quite literally. There had been a parliamentary system of a sort before Weimar, but it had been subsumed under a monarchy which was missed by a significant portion of the population. Democracy as we understand it was very much in its infancy and the guardrails against a coup were weak at best. We have a better time of it now. We have over a couple centuries of existence as a democratic republic, although we probably have only experienced a relatively genuine democracy since the mid-20th century. So, in theory, we should have fairly good institutions in place. We have had some struggles economically, with the global Great Recession leaving behind plenty of scar tissue, and of course the pandemic-driven recession of 2020. The decimation of our industrial base only ceased around 2021 or 2022. But there is reason to believe we are starting to bring a lot of that back, and should see more in years to come. The fallout from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was nothing like what the Germans of the immediate post-WWI era would have experienced. The Iraq War was botched from the start. The Afghanistan War went on way too long, and watching the collapse of the Afghan government as we were still getting our troops out was uncomfortable for all of us who are related to members of the US military. But we really didn't suffer a calamitous defeat. We didn't need to rebuild ruined cities on our own territory. It is true that we do have some bad vibes that have lingered for a while, and unfortunately would-be despots are good at homing in on bad vibes and amplifying them. We have also had a long-term fascist and authoritarian undercurrent since the collapse of America First in the 1940s and McCarthyism in the 1950s. Our equivalent of a Beer Hall Putsch (the January 6th insurrection) is noteworthy, and the weakening of our civic institutions is also noteworthy, and therein lies the risk that we will wake up at some point early in November and realize that the republic we had known for a lifetime is gone should Trump win the electoral vote (I doubt he wins the popular vote). 

The lament of many Germans after World War II was that they had gone from being respected and feared to being despised practically overnight once they were decisively defeated militarily and ideologically. I grew up at a point when if one ever heard someone described as a "good German" that was almost always an insult. I would be deeply disappointed if this too is our fate. Thankfully, it's not too late - yet.